German Woman’s Bra Deflects Stray Bullet from Boar Hunt

One woman visiting the town of Gadebusch, Germany can count her lucky stars after a stray bullet miraculously hit the underwire of her bra and deflected off, resulting in only a bruise.

According to German newspaper Gadebusch-Rehnaer, the woman was bicycling near a field last week with her husband when they decided to take a break at the roadside. The tourist, a resident of North Rhine-Westphalia, said she noticed a sharp pain in her chest and later discovered that she was hit by a bullet.

The next field over, the hunter who fired the nearly-fatal round did not even know what occurred—until the woman’s husband angrily arrived and demanded an explanation.

“Those in charge of the hunt then broke it up straight away,” local police spokesperson André Falke told The Local.

As tough as bras may be, even the strongest would be hard-pressed to deflect a bullet, especially the high-caliber rounds used to hunt wild boar in Germany. So how did a bullet seemingly bounce off this woman, leaving just a bruise? Flake said it was possible that the bullet ricocheted off something else first.

“[We] found in the alleged shooting direction, among other things, a hunted boar from which the bullet could have bounced,” Falke said.

The hunters apparently did harvest a young wild boar with the same bullet, making it likely that the projectile either traveled through the animal, losing velocity before hitting the woman, or ricocheted off and struck the tourist in a freak accident. Either way, local authorities say that an investigation is ongoing. Like North American hunting officials, German authorities for the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region stressed proper hunting safety and urge sportsmen to make sure they know what is behind their target before shooting.

Surprisingly, underwire bras have a history of protecting their owners. In 2008, a robbery victim was saved from injury after her bra’s underwire deflected her assailant’s knife. Earlier this year, a Brazilian woman escaped death after her bra similarly stopped a bullet from hitting her heart.